According to Wikipedia, the United States has 413 billionaires. The world's total number is 1210.

The U.S. Supremes have ruled that money equals free speech and that free speech, understood as spending money on political advertisements, cannot be limited by government. That is our new national paradigm...at least until the whole enterprise comes apart at the seams.

For the past few years, I've been explaining to readers how congressional Republicans will move to impeach President Obama...should he win a second term. One doesn't have to be Nostradamus to understand the modern GOP playbook. All one has to do is review the 2nd term of our last Democratic president. Something which Esquire's Charles Pierce does for us.

In the February issue of Esquire, Pierce reports on a recent interview with Bill Clinton......

Mitt Romney has been paying taxes at a rate of 13.9%. The Romneys are in the top 1% of the top 1%. Romney's tax policy, should he be elected president, promises to cut tax rates on people like himself by an additional 1/3. If candidate Romney set forth a tax policy which made people like him pay more in taxes, then that would be one thing. But Romney's policy is meant to give families, like the Romneys, a 33% reduction in their already-low tax rate.

In the fever swamps of the conservative movement, people like Romney deserve to pay lower tax rates than, say, policemen.....because people like the Romney's are "investors." In this way of thinking, very rich Americans who, you know, "invest", should have lower tax rates than policemen.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels gave the response to President Obama's SOTU address last night. Really smart GOP insiders wanted Mitch Daniels to run for president against the Dark Knight, however, Mrs. Daniels said no. No biggie, really.....Daniels is an unknown. But what Mitch Daniels is doing to the state of Indiana is kind of a big deal.

Like John Kasich in Ohio and Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Daniels knows that crushing unions takes away Democratic assets...making it easier for Republicans to win elections and hold onto power at the same time that Americans are turning away from the divisive, intolerant and rich-serving GOP.

Last night down in Florida GOP candidate Mitt Romney basically called Newt Gingrich out as an unprincipled liar...which, of course, Gingrich is.

Starting at about the 9:40 mark...listen to Gingrich, a master of deception, attempt to convince viewers that the $1.6 million his company took from Fanny and Freddie wasn't for the purpose of lobbying and influence peddling. Watch how Romney calmly calls out outrageous bullsh*t on Gingrich...and also notice how Gingrich takes a long pause to consider which diversion or distraction to use to take him off the subject.

South Carolina's conservative voters chose a GOP presidential candidate on Saturday who has unfavorable ratings nationally of 58-60%.

Newt Gingrich, despite his willingness to bait white conservative voters through outrageous racist arguments, would be utterly humiliated in a national election against Barack Obama. That is why Democrats are saying of a Gingrich candidacy...bring it the hell on.

Following up on yesterday's post...it seems that the GOP presidential candidate-to-be, Mitt Romney, has responded to calls to release his tax returns by stating yesterday that his income tax rate is...

There has been quite a bit of noise surrounding the U.S. Marines urinating-on-Taliban-corpses story. Most of the noise has been of the polite disapproval type. You know, 'I support our soldiers killing the terrorists over there, but those brave boys shouldn't be making videos of themselves desecrating dead bodies....that's just not right.'

The typical "condemnations" were issued by all the proper government folks. Kings of Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton both condemned the urinary actions by our fighting-for-freedom Marines and did what these proper government folks always do....announced that there would be an investigation.

Imagine members of Hezbollah, recognized by the U.S. and Israel as a "terrorist" group, covertly entering Israel and over time assassinating a half a dozen of Israel's most distinguished science professors, one by one. James Bond movie style assassinations. Assassinations where a "terrorist" rides a motorcycle alongside a car carrying the targeted Israeli science professor and places a bomb with a magnetized base on the side of the car, and then speeds off.

If members of Hezbollah carried out such spy movie activities against Israeli science professors, is there any doubt that Israel and their lone defender in the world, the United States, would be calling those assassinations "terrorist acts?" Further, if Hezbollah extremists did such a thing wouldn't Israel and the United States be calling for reprisal the moment it happened?

Chris Christie, Republican governor of New Jersey, has been recently stumping for the GOP bankster presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. Why Romney would desire an uncouth, sloppy, big mouthed ass to be stumping for him is beyond my pay grade to be answering.

Myth making is an industry within politics. In our age of smorgasboard news,....just choose what you like....myth making has exploded. Americans can no longer agree on one narrative of what just happened yesterday. Our politics, if not our entire culture, has accepted post-modernism: there is no real truth.

Back in the Bill Clinton days....before the internet and Fox News exploded as primary sources of information, much of it false....myth making was all the rage. If you took the words of conservative and Village media as truth, then you believed that Hillary Clinton was a murderer, or a lesbian...or both. And that President Clinton was most likely still running drugs down in Arkansas and Tennessee. Those were the salad days of what I refer to as wingnuttery.

In July of 2010 President Obama signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The bill passed the House 237-192 in June, 2010...and the Senate passed the bill 60-39 in July, 2010.

Dodd-Frank was passed in response to the financial sector collapse that began in 2007.

As I mentioned the other day, the Iowa GOP caucuses are not representative of the larger, American electorate....and that's actually a good thing. Last night Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum ended in a dead heat for first place in the Iowa GOP caucuses. Romney received 30,015 caucus votes (24.6%)....Santorum with 30,007 votes (24.5%)...Ron Paul took in 26,219 votes (21.4%).

Iowa conservatives, apparently, have not settled on a presidential candidate. In winning by a photo finish, Romney received the lowest percentage of Iowa caucus votes since Bob Dole took 26% of the Iowa primary in 1996. As you may remember...Dole went on to take a thorough asskicking at the hands of incumbent president Bill Clinton that year.

Recently, I presented two examples of modern racism. One involved the mortgage seller, Countrywide...the other involved an AP study examining South Carolina's voter ID law and it's racist implications. While America has made great strides in our tolerance of non-whites, non-Christians and non-males....racism and bigotry in the United States is far from being eradicated.

Ask Mike Huckabee whether winning the Iowa GOP caucuses means much. The Huckster, now working for the GOP's communication network, Fox News, took the Iowa caucuses in 2008. But Huckabee did not become the GOP's presidential nominee. In fact, Mike Huckabee took 34% of caucus voters in Iowa in 2008 to second place finisher, Mitt Romney's 25%. The eventual Republican nominee, John McCain, could only muster 13% of Iowa Caucus voters in 2008......finishing up in Iowa by tying Fred "Red Truck" Thompson for third place. Red Truck, of course, went on to hawk reverse mortgages on teevee for some skimmer outfit.

Four short years ago, Ron Paul, now in a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in Iowa, only received 10% of the caucus vote in Iowa in 2008.